Overall job satisfaction is likely to reflect the combination of partial satisfactions related to a variety of features over one’s job, such as rewards, relationships, human resources management and the work itself. This is an important issue since higher job satisfaction is likely to result in higher performance at work, decreased absenteeism and tardiness. This research includes two complementary studies. The first one intends to analyze the stability of the latent construct job satisfaction over time, through four facets - satisfaction with relationships, rewards, human resources management practices and work itself. Study 2 aims to compare the results obtained with an aggregate weighted measure of job satisfaction (Aggregated Job Satisfaction) and a single item measure (Overall Job Satisfaction). Both are cross-sectional studies with repeated measures on six time moments over a twelve years period (1996-2008) in the Portuguese financial sector organizations. Results from study 1 evidences the structural invariance of the latent construct job satisfaction and the different loading pattern on each facet, over time. Results from the second study evidences that the overall job satisfaction and the aggregated job satisfaction measures displays a similar pattern of results overtime. Moreover, results show that job satisfaction facets predicts overall job satisfaction. Theoretically, this research presents a wider view on job satisfaction issues: its facets, the debate on aggregated versus overall measures and relationships patterns over time. Furthermore, satisfaction with human resources management emerges as the stronger predictor of overall job satisfaction in all the six time periods. Our results are important in terms of Human Resources Management because workers value highly some features offered by the job. So, the major practical contribution of our results is the confirmation of the important role that Management practices can play to improve job satisfaction through performance appraisal systems and training.

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Job satisfaction Facets,Aggregated job satisfaction,Financial Sector